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Imagine if somebody decided to film a prequel series to “Homeland” — starring Carrie’s mom as the super-CIA spy struggling to balance home and covert activities.

Despite the often eerie parallels to the Showtime thriller, ABC’s eight-part miniseries “The Assets” is based on fact.

That does nothing to make it compelling.

Based on the book “Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed,” by Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille, the miniseries trails real-life counterintelligence officer Grimes (Jodie Whittaker, “Broadchurch”) as she hunts for one of the greatest turncoats in American history — one of her fellow agents.

Ames (played by Paul Rhys) leaked to the KGB the names of Russian officials spying for the U.S., compromising hundreds of intelligence operations and leading to the deaths of several people.

In the opener, “My Name is Aldrich Ames,” it’s 1985, and the Soviet Union is rattled by President Reagan’s Star Wars initiative. Relations between the two superpowers have never seemed frostier.

Ames — known as Rick to his colleagues — downs a few martinis, walks into a Russian embassy and dumps some classified documents on a receptionist’s desk.

Sandy is trying to get some rubles to a KGB contact in Russia. While she makes the case to her colleagues to cultivate this agent as an “asset” — someone who funnels information to the CIA — Rick lurks in the background.

In the Soviet Union, a U.S. diplomat vows he can make the money drop — which means you know it is going to end badly.

After an extended chase, he ends up in a Russian prison where the walls are coated — with fresh dripping blood.

He, at least, is released.

In the wake of the disastrous operation, Sandy learns the agency has lost more assets in the past few months than in its entire history. There’s a mole. But who? How about that creepy, sweaty guy who always seems to be lurking at her office door?

Next week, in “Jewel in the Crown,” a KGB defector terrifies Rick because he might be able to reveal his identity.

Tough is fine; the ability to see what’s in front of her would be better.

Ames is no Brody. There’s no shading or nuance to his part. Rhys plays his villain so broadly, he might as well be wearing an ugly Christmas sweater in July. His fellow agents — including Sandy — look like morons for not catching on sooner to the perpetually perspiring spy.

It is amusing to watch the agents work with ’80s technology — a small camera, a pen with a cyanide capsule, a rickety Teletype that rattles out code that must be transcribed by hand. When Sandy searches for information, she and her colleagues must unload boxes of documents and pore through pages for clues.